Television. Furniture, and Sculpture: .

,
The Room with the American View

VITO ACCONCI
from Illuminating Video: An Essential Guide to
Video Art, ed. Doug Hall and Sally Jo Fifer (1990)
Television space is fishbowl space. There's a world going on in there: that ex-
clamation might be made by a child-person looking, from out of the large
world helshe is in, into the small world behind either the aquarium glass or
the TV screen. In the case of TV, the world is on something, on-screen, not
(as in the case of the aquarium) i n something, in the bowl; but, unlike mov-
ies, the TV screen isn't all, there's something behind\it, something underneath
it all-the TV tube lies behind the screen. W e know that the screen is only
the facade of the box; even now that the screen can be: drastically reduced in
size-as in the two-inch "watchmann-there still has to be room for the TV
tube. The TV box still has to have depth, which remains the largest dimen-
sion of the box. The TV screen might be thought. of as the window into the
box--except that we probably can't, in 1990s be innocent enough to believe
we're really looking through a window, really peering inside the box. Rather,
the screen might be seen as some kind of distorting, inside-out mirror, which
the power inside the box holds up to the world at large. Inside the box, the
world--or the power-to-be-a-world-is condensed: it's the size of a conven-
tional package, a gift, it's power made handleable. The viewer might be led to
believe, then, that the world is in his or her hands.
The close-up literalizes television. The close-up face is the same size as
the TV screen; the face on-screen, then, is a fact, just as the TV set is a fact in
the living room. Whereas on a movie screen a close-up face is at least fifteen
times the size of an actual face (so that the face on film is a landscape, like
John Wayne's face, a face to walk around on-the face is distant, out-of-reach,
avid Cronenberg, V~deodrotne,1983.
like a landscape outside a train window, untouchable, like Greta Garbo's face;
or the face is a monument or a monster-it comes up from the ground or the
grave, it comes from another time), on a T V screen a close-up face is approxi-
mately the same size as an actual face: "his"l"her" face and "my" face are face-
to-face--we're in the same world-this is here and now. The viewer and the
face on-screen are comfortable with each other; the news from that face, then,
is assumed, taken as fact. But then second thoughts might come up: if this is
a face, where's the body? The face on-screen is a detached head: a head-with-
out-a-body-without-organs. This is pure mind, without a body to ground it;
this is a head that floats, and can't (won't) come down to earth. The news
from that face is news from nowhere. (The world is nowhere: if the world were
placed, then we might be able to handle it, control it.)
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 cure fits into and takes up space in an art-exhrbition area. Take this "thing*': i t The new spareness and Icmnrss ct~uldbe exempllhed in the sleekness of the
isn't as big as a mom, so it's only furniture; it isn't as big as architecture, so television scr; the new TY scc has k e n allowed, encouraged, to announce its
it's only sculpture. In its rarly days, the TV set tmk. inside the house, the hi-tech background. Television, now, is science-tict~nndropped into the mid-
of specialized furniture: the p s i t i o n of sculpture. Ir w a s Iike othcr dle of your home: televislotl (as well as stereo equipmenr, e t c . ) is science
furniture, hut there were differences: it couldn't be sat in, like a chair: i t turned into a per. The vienfer/consumer can have part of what NASA has,
couldn't b sat at, like a table; part of the console could, as a by-product, what Bell Telephone L b s have: science becomes Jernocratlzed.
function like n cabinet. for storage, bur nor the T V parr itself. Cumpared to Assume that there are two kinds of power: economic power ahd sexual
other furniture, the television set couldn'c be used, it couId only be looked at; power. Whar new TV equ~pmrnrdws, nuw, is camouflage economic power: i t
it had the uselessness that one associates wirh am. A person could walk around gives the buyer the illusion that economic pnwcr is in hislher hands-her ail.
the TV set, che way ti person could walk around a sculpture; but, In order to the buyer can prove it, she huyer can hold the starc-of-tbc-art in a h x (as if
see what was being transmirtcd, the person wouId have to look a t it frontally booking a t himsclf/herself i n a phntogmph, I i kc uthcr people, in other photo-
(the way a sculpture is looked nt in photographs: photographs being the mnst graphs. holding the state-of-the-art in a box). And holding it, and looking at
convenienr way a sculpture becomes known, since a sculpture is harder to it latcr in the pnvacy of hislhcr horne, and making that home a showplace
move than a punting-thc wartd o f nrt distriburion, the world of art books, is where equipment can be shown off to friends-all this is ;L way of draining
predicated on frontality and thcrcfare on painting). But recentIy there's been a scxual power. Because teievision is the absence of the body; television signifies
change in the shape of television: thc mode of television is no longer the un-
the body-become-electronics, the body-without-sex. This sexlcssncss, rhen. t5
movable console but che portable. What was analogous m sculpture is now, a t
pIaccd in [lie home, in exactly those spots wherc rhc hody runs rampant: the
first glance, more analogous to painring: the TV set can be moved from corner woman watches the T V set in the kitchcn, as she prepares food-the roupfc
to bed to kitchen counter, rhe way a painting can be moved fmm wall ro wall. wntches the T V set at [he foor of rhcir bed, right beforc scxual intercourse.
But the analogy doesn't hold: the TV set is too "rhick," too deep. to be a The scxlcssncss of the television set functions as a sign, a reminder; it induccs
painting (though soon-to-be-possible, probably, and maybe atready existent in a nostalgia not so much for the past as for a fiction of the future: "If only we
privileged cases, is the dream of the paper-rhin TV). At the moment, anyway, didn't need to eat ," '"f only we didn't desire tr, fuck . . ."
the conventional TV set is neither paint in^ nor sculpture: rclcvision wades the
Since television represents an absence, a difference, i t has to be sccn as a t
world of art-television is coo much sciencc to be arr. least slighrly out-of-place in the home. It has to took more "hi-tech" than any-
The connotation of relevision is: science and technology. In rhe I 9505, thing clsc in the home. Science, though democratized, still flauncs i t s futurc
chis spelled terror to the Arncrican home: science belonged ro the Russians,
(science, mlking democracy. announces mpifaIism): the current TV set is being
the Russians had put the first pmon into space. outer space was the Russians' outdated a t rhc very moment it's looked at-the fact rhat ~ t ' sso advanced snys
territory Icf, science-6crion movies of that time--like Inwjin?~of the Bvdy
only that "you ain't seen norhin' yet.'' The viewer, the buyer, owns only a
S n a t c h and T h Thing-which equated the unknown with, the "Rcd Menace,"
piecc of the future: thc viewer, the buyer, has only a model, only a toy ver-
the Communist spy). In an atmosphere like that, bringing scicnce into t t ~ c
sion, of technologicat dcvelopmcnt. Science maintains itself as ungraspable,
home in the s h a of ~ a bare TV, space wouId have been like inviting to dinner while at the mrnc time promising itself as "dreams money can buy." The toy
a cornpsire of Dr. Frankenstein and Kim Philby. So scicnce had to be domes- version of science announces that matter is with money; its secrer
ticated: turned into furniture, it was nothing to bc afraid of, it was something message is. once matter is governed, [hen sex will be along wirh it.
to rclax with. But then things changed; by 1969, the 6rst person ro step on
Having money. rhen, mighr be rhc oppnsire of the poss~bilityo f "buying sm";
the moon was an American, the American flag was ~mplantedon the moon.
having money m ~ a h l tx a mattcr of "buying out" sex, petting rid of sex, the
Science wasn't frightening anymore, the heavens were brought down to (an
way the businesspersan gets rid of thc opposition. T o y science allows a person
American) earth, the h t u r c was now. More recently, therefore, there hasn't
in the role of relevision viewer to practico otller roles: pactice for a role in the
k e n the need to cnmouflagc the science look of relev~sianinside the hand-
world uf the rich, pracrice for a role in the worlrl of n o M y .
crafted-looking cansolc; the hnndcrafred look could be seen as the Old Warld, Thc T V censumer practices thc role of the T V prorluccs. The means is
the European world, dr;lgp,ing [tie American back. whereas the American now
che field of home-made v ~ d e o .Theoterically. rablr TV is public-access TV-
was allowed to be a cowboy ngain-and rile cowboy traveled spare and lean,
anyone can have a program on cable relevision. The connotation of home-made
with renunus connecrions to "l~omr.,"the cowboy was the "Swinging Single." video, put on cable television. is: this is television from one homc to an-
sornchudy alwdy has experienced i t , in the past, now thar the sculpture no Performance, Video, and Trouble in the Home
longer exists: in that case, sculpture drifrs off into the realm of archawlugy.)
Sculpture, In order to be expcricnced, has to be preserved; ir has to exist the
way a: city exists, long enough to be raken for granted. The sculptor, then,
whatever other intentions helshe might claim to have, is always engagcd in an
act of conservatism; though the means might be the nppnrcnr flaunting of tra-
ditions, the end is the most traditional, the most conservative, of all-making A television produccr rcccntly said to me that he thought T h M~nqnrwnm~
the being that refuses to die. T h e sculptor, then, who tries to thicken this the first video art piece ever made. Initially. the comment struck me as
plot, the sculptor who imports video into hislhcr object installation, might be But every time I came Lack to the prescribed content of this essay-rly sw-
a person who's afraid of k i n g outdated, a person ernbamscd about clinging so enties "performance-based video"' and i t s relations to sixcles lxrformance arc-
hard to the past. along came thar silly comment, begging for attention. Images of Alice, Ralph,
Trixic. and Norton floorled my mind: Ralph trying to protect his home from
armed intruders by ~rnbasticallybrandishing a water p~scoI;Norton rmchinp
Ralph to dance so that Alice wouldn't be attracted to the young, single dance
instructor who had just moved into the building; Ralph loudly admonishing
Alfcc for never "standing behind himh' on h ~ harebrained
s schemes find Al ice
icily responding, "I'd love to. Ralph, but there's not much room back thesc."
While these memories were pleasurable, 1 was hardly convinrrcl they con-
stituted the ancestral roots OF video arc, and furthermore, my mission wnu nor
to enter into a genealogical hunt. Then something struck m e about Thr H o ~ ~ r y -
nloonm- certain sort of '"trouble in the home," the sort rhnr was o f inccresr
ru mc in the work 1 was exploring. The trouble in the Kramdens' home was
thar rhcy rarely left it, and rhis was the pmdoxical crux of the series-al-
though they called chernselvrs the "honqmooncrs," wc ncver saw them on
their honeymoon and whenever they tried ro rakc 3 vacnrion (thc cqurvalcnt of
a sccond honeymoon), the car would break dawn. Ralph would get hooked
into a shady rcal cstatc dm1 on a summer cabin, and so forth. Tvpical of fifties
television agendas, we were rneanc t o hc!icvc thar thc Kramdcns were on an
excended honeymoon in their marriage, stahiliacd in and by the home site.
which doubled as a holiday site. Atypical, however. was that this hnl~daynras
no picnic. W ~ c hRalph rcvcrsc-stercotypcd as "female" hysreric and Alice as
"male" rationalist, trouble was cr~nstnntlybrewing. Now, rhis reversed srereo-
typing, which could be so easily re-reversed, did nor represenr any great srridc
forward in the tiistory of malc-female social relntions, bur in the context of the
r c ) p s , the fact that the notion o f gender could be reconstructed at a11 was a
small, sipnfficanr srep.
E am more interested, liowcvcr, in the su brler psychoh~storicalirnplica-
rians of T h Nottqrnwnm. First, since the home was shown as the slte of Fen-
der's monstruction, it was suggested chat rhe home is also che slte of its o r i ~ l -
nnl construction-a process shown to 1x problematic by che Kramdens' desire
to rcverse it. Second, since it was cvtdcnt that this thing called teIevision was
mediaring our own subjective positions in the home from which we watched